A Clock Tower Affair
by Bloble
Summary: The Clock Tower, center of all magecraft, cornerstone of the Mage's Association, and governing body of magi everywhere, has had its share of secrets and incidents. At the center of a particularly sordid affair is a certain Japanese high school student that the Tower never cared about. Unfortunately, it should have.
1. Chapter 1

The Clock Tower, center of all magecraft, cornerstone of the Mage's Association, and governing body of magi everywhere, has had its share of secrets. Undead dragons, enchanted stools, and cursed sex toys are the least of the unpleasant unknowns that lurk in the deepest, darkest recesses of the illustrious university, and there are daily quests undertaken by down-on-their luck students to search for something useful in the place's basement, so that they may avoid being kicked out for negligence and time-wasting. Not all such parties return.

The Clock Tower also has more than a few tales circulating its perimeter, through students, cleaning ladies, lecturers, and some even say the Vice Director herself. Tales of illegal undead dragon breeding programs, a ghostly chair-maker still practicing his craft, and of magical potions that will permanently endow one's blade with several inches of great heft should it be ordered and consumed before 9:30 PM the next day.

One such tale is particularly famous for causing wives everywhere to look upon their husbands with unbearable jealousy, and to mistreat any female or effeminate male student they come across during their visits, which have risen in frequency by over 500% in the past six months. This tale is one so scandalous and raunchy that mentioning it is unofficially forbidden before midnight or after six AM, even in private dormitories. More than a few adventurous students have found themselves suddenly lacking a tuition, crest, and clothes the morning after letting their lips run loose. Alas, these draconian restrictions have only increased the story's popularity, ensuring that anyone who arrives at the Clock Tower will be able to recite it by heart within a week.

The story, as with many, can all be traced back to a single unfortunate boy in a remote country almost no one in the Clock Tower could give two shakes of an undead dragon's tail about. The boy who unwittingly caused this catastrophe is unfortunate not because of the karmic burden he would bear for the horrendous effects of his actions. He is also not unfortunate because of the undoubtedly heavy guilt that would crush his heart were he aware of the consequences to his thoughtless words.

No, Shirou was unfortunate because he asked Tohsaka Rin, the second most popular girl in her school, to be his girlfriend in full view of her younger Sister.

Tohsaka Rin was a magus, but that had little to do with why Shirou, whose surname remains forever unknown even to his closest friends, so thoroughly attempted to court her affections. The reason behind why Shirou proposed in such a thoughtless way is the fact that he was an idiot of masterful caliber. Should you ever reach Akasha, the Swirl of the Root and center of all creation, search through its infinite pages for the greatest moron in all creation, and you shall surely find Shirou's name before anyone else's.

Shirou, a young, strapping, generally good looking redhead of about eighteen, asked Tohsaka Rin, a slender, dark haired girl with gentle jade eyes and a winning smile, to be his girlfriend because he'd confessed to being a bit lonely and his friend, Matou Shinji, had given him some poor advice.

It is common knowledge in Fuyuki City, the small town from which the unfortunate boy and his object of affection originate, that if you want to feel good about yourself, you should ask Tohsaka Rin to go on a date with you. That method is well known to all who frequent the city's secondary school as a surefire way to cheer yourself or a willing friend up or give someone considering suicide a second lease on life. It is known as such to all except Tohsaka Rin herself, who merely wonders at why she is such a popular target for people's affections.

Not one person has ever successfully taken Tohsaka Rin on a date. She will, without fail, reject every single one. The most perfect man (or woman) in the world could pledge his (or her) undying love to her, and her heart will remain unmoved even as she tells him (or her!) how flattered she is. Yet students and even some depressed adults will still ask Tohsaka Rin out because she is the greatest person in the world when it comes to rejecting someone. Her rejections are kind, thoughtful, understanding, and, some would say, approaching enlightenment. She will not fail to tell you why you are a wonderful person, and why you shouldn't give up on your search for love. She will serenely, gently, and unfailingly push you away with all the grace of a fluffy cloud made of cotton candy. Though your heart will be broken, you'll definitely come out of the situation feeling very good about yourself.

However, no one has ever asked Tohsaka Rin out in front of her younger sister, the number one most popular girl in the city, not just the school. It would be a social faux pas, and even a newborn child has enough self awareness to realize just how bad of an idea such an action would be. Tohsaka Sakura, said younger Sister, is someone who receives much less affection from the majority of Fuyuki than her older sibling, yet if one asks any random person hailing from the city who the most popular girl there is, they will always say that it is Tohsaka Sakura.

Shirou, whose surname isn't even recorded in the bastion of all knowledge, was quickly rejected by Rin, who operated with all of her usual flair. Had he stopped there, his story would've been no different than that of every other person in Fuyuki. If he had had enough restraint to nod his head and accept her beautiful answer, the world would have been a more peaceful and wonderful place for it.

"I implore you to reconsider," he said, hazel eyes shining with bright determination.

Rin blinked, put her right index finger on her lip, thought about it for a few seconds, and said: "Okay."

The news spread like a funny cat picture through the Internet. Within the hour the entire school knew. By the end of the school day, the town was armed with the miraculous knowledge. That evening, news stories were already circulating, reporting on this unbelievable achievement of human stubbornness and rejoicing over the monumental accomplishment.

The next morning, after finding Shirou's severed head floating in her bathroom sink with its expression affixed to that of a man undergoing eternal torment in the worst of mankind's hells, Tohsaka Rin stormed into her little sister's room, threw said body part into Tohsaka Sakura's smug little face with all the force of a Little League pitcher on steroids, said (or screamed, rather) in no uncertain terms that she was sick of this stupid dysfunctional family and that her father would never have approved of this stupidity were he still here (Tohsaka Tokiomi, who was at that point basking in the beautiful oneness that accessing the Akashic Records after winning the Grail War entitles you to, wouldn't have cared less) and that she was leaving to get as far away from her vengeful demon of a little sister as she could without escaping to a different universe, whirled, stormed back to her room, packed her bags, waved goodbye to her mother (who had been and still was wondering why Tokiomi had forgotten to include her name in the all expenses paid vacation to the Akashic Records winning the Grail War entitled you to), chartered the first flight to London that was available, and flew all the way to the Clock Tower before angrily punching a hole in a wall and finally starting to feel a little better about the whole thing.

Unfortunately for Rin, who was herself almost as unfortunate as the unfortunate boy who had died for being an idiot and pissing off Rin's little sister, said wall happened to be one of the outer walls of the private domicile of one Waver Annabelle Velvet, a rather infamous lecturer at the Clock Tower who was infamous not only because of his sharp wit, rugged good looks, and propensity for turning the latter end of the majority of his lectures into novella-length rants against the conspiracies of the upper crust of the Association, but for his heated rivalry with his old professor, a fair haired, fair bearded man that tolerated silly concepts like hard work and fairness just as much as Rin's vengeful demon sister tolerated anyone presuming to make her older sibling happy.

Waver Annabelle Velvet (or WAVE as his students called him despite, or perhaps because of his dislike of the lazy, incorrect nickname) did not like it when people punched holes in his wall. He was a no nonsense kind of person who viewed hole-wall-punching as a past time for children and unruly teenagers rather than adults like himself who engaged in the much more refined art of writing angry letters to their old professors and getting incensed when said professor threw the letters into the trash without even reading them, leading to the writing of yet more angry letters destined to burn without ever being read. His wife enjoyed it even less, which is why he invited Tohsaka Rin inside for tea, an event that marks the beginning of the most sordid, kinky, and steamy affair in Clock Tower history.

That, however, is a story for another day.


	2. Chapter 2

There are many issues plaguing the Clock Tower and its myriad of unexplored rooms, ranging from mundane things like that one leak in a certain lecture hall stubbornly refusing to be fixed as it emasculates dozens of otherwise skilled janitors, to the Friday night betting pools over which of the parade of adventurers beginning their journey into the Basement (or as it is unofficially called by pretty much everyone, the Dungeons of Doom) will come out the next day with their mind intact, with side bets on whether said adventurers will have been transformed into slimes or break dancing skeletons before exiting. A minor event that brought a certain level of fame to this unsavory practice is the great Dance Dance Revolution of 2002, where an enterprising student managed to crawl out of the Basement after enduring twenty six hours of exposure to unspeakable horrors, only to find his errant bones doing a skillful variation of a complex tango with his girlfriend, who immediately dumped the spineless (and skull-less and rib-less) wimp for his much more powerful bones. The outcome was so unlikely that several Crests changed hands that day, and a minor family lost seven generations worth of expensive mana potions to a girl named Candi, who promised to put them to good use in her latest video.

Candi is a vitally important component of this story, not because of the quality of her video, which a great many magi proclaimed was her best yet and ended up making her a very rich lady, but because said video is the one Waver Velvet was in the middle of watching when his wife first entered his private quarters to ask where he put the house maid. The amount of violence Candi's video caused that day was enough to cancel WAVE's lectures for a week, leading to days of joyous celebration and an entire generation of students that went without knowing exactly how to deal with an undead dragon rampaging through the halls with the Vice Director's unconscious and scantily clad body clamped firmly in its mouth. It also resulted in Waver sleeping on the couch for the duration of that long, painful week, the last day of which annoyed him so much that he invited a Japanese schoolgirl wearing an absurdly short skirt and long stockings into his house for tea, just to see the expression on his wife's face.

It wasn't a very pretty expression. Tohsaka Rin could tell that much. First impressions are powerful things that can and will colour a person's opinion of another for weeks and possibly even the rest of their lives. Tohsaka Rin's impression of Waver Velvet's wife was such a powerful one that she completely forgot how lukewarm and bitter the tea was. She remembered not one second of the awkward, uncomfortable hour spent sitting at a tiny table with two complete strangers that seemed to be in an eternal staring contest. The memory of Shirou and her previous anger faded away instantly, swept away by the flood of endorphins and hormones that had been triggered when Rin saw Waver Annabelle Velvet's wife.

"Hate," Rin wanted to say. "Hate. If I carved the word Hate upon every individual unit of prana in my circuits and kept them active for an entire year, the amount of pain I feel would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for you this very second. Hate."

Instead of being honest, Rin drank some more of the badly made tea, smiled sweetly, and thanked Waver for his hospitality in cute, broken English. As the hour elapsed and a large, building sized clock somewhere in the city rang out, she excused herself and made to leave.

Waver's wife laughed and poured Rin another cup of tea, insisting with a cheerful, thoughtless grace that it was much too late for a Japanese student to be wandering around the city at night. It was dangerous after all, and Rin was oh so frail-looking. Waver would be a gentleman and give up his spot in the bedroom for the night, since hospitality trumped all. Rin's hatred for Waver's wife doubled, tripled, and folded into a quantum singularity of imaginary numbers. She nodded, thanked Waver's kind and generous wife, and insisted that she couldn't possibly impose. At this point Waver had silently retreated to the kitchen to take refuge in dish washing while the verbal joust in the dining room escalated beyond his wildest estimations.

Several minutes later, after Rin's hatred of Waver's wife had grown larger than the universe could sustain and branched off into an entirely separate sub-reality of its own, the foreigner capitulated and accepted her victor's extremely unreasonable terms of surrender with as much grace as she could muster given the situation, which was less than she'd have liked and more than Waver's wife deserved. She kept up the pleasant, agreeable expression until the moment Waver's delighted wife left the room to prepare the beds, after which she released all of her unbearable hatred for a single, infinitesimal moment. Anyone seeing her expression at that moment would've suffered from PTSD, claimed they'd seen the devil, or sworn violently that they'd never cheat at magical strip poker again. Anyone, that is, except for Waver, who sat down beside Rin, allowed a small, knowing smile to slip out of his calm façade, offered Rin some much more expertly prepared tea, and said: "I know how you feel."

She silently accepted the drink, took a sip, and released all of her pent up frustration with a sigh that would put the most exasperated of parents to shame.

Waver poured the rest of the pot into his own cup and mirrored Rin's actions silently. After a moment of time equivalent to five minutes divided by the average time it takes for Matou Shinji to get rid of his morning wood, he spoke. "I don't like it when people punch holes in my walls."

Rin nodded, took another sip, and apologized in English. Normally she wouldn't have considered such a thing, but after experiencing a loathing that dwarfed even the reaction her little sister normally elicited, Waver seemed like a beautiful tea-bestowing angel who could do no wrong, and she didn't hesitate to try and get on his good side. Her apology was so endearing that it cannot be reproduced in text, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was ridiculously cute. It was almost enough to make up for the fact that Waver's wife had been perfectly perky the whole time, not even breaking a sweat after being told in excruciating detail by her husband about the grievous wound her precious wall had suffered at the hands of an unknown but certainly gorgeous assailant.

Waver downed the cup and, with typical British stoicism, shook his head. "She _hates_ it when people punch holes in her walls. Good job. Keep acting like that and you'll go places."

He was right. Rin was definitely going places. More specifically, his bedroom. Alas, such a statement was in that context much less suggestive than it ought to have been, as Waver belatedly realized that the small space between the exotic girl's stockings and the bottom of her skirt was more attractive than anything he'd seen on his journeys through and . The fact that said girl looked to be about a decade his junior didn't perturb the lecturer, who had long ago become acclimatized to the constant stream of ambitious young magi offering to perform services for him after class in exchange for better marks. Those enterprising boys, girls, and hermaphrodites wished to go places, but the only place they ever went was the Dunce Stool, a nefarious cursed chair that temporarily sapped the IQ of whoever sat on it. The complementary cap was a toy prop, but worked unrealistically well as a way to draw the attention of those who would have to wear it, ensuring that they worked hard to counter the nonexistent enchantment on it rather than the much more real one they would be sitting on. Waver never told anyone where he'd gotten the stool (it was the basement) or that it was cursed, because if he did he wouldn't be able to bait those he disliked into sitting on it and leaving the room doing a bad Mr. Bean impression. Alas, his wife was too canny to be tricked so easily, but Waver still fondly recalled the one time he'd left a certain fair haired, fair bearded, fair-hating professor dumbly asking every passerby about where he could get the toffee and ice cream Santa Claus had promised him for Christmas. In the middle of April.

"Here," Waver said as he slipped a business card down the flabbergasted Rin's shirt. "Come to my lectures. Those prissy bastards 'forgot' to list it in the catalogue this year, and I need at least one student to sign up so I can collect my paycheck. Consider any fees waived. Good luck."

With an abrupt farewell, the relatively un-ambitious student who was most certainly going places changed into her pajamas and made her way to the master bedroom with some trepidation, blanching when she realized that there were not, in fact, two beds, but a single heart shaped monstrosity that boasted a salmon pink colour scheme and looked to have been stolen from a tacky love hotel. Waver Velvet's wife was already fast asleep on one side, hogging a thin blanket that was almost see-through, complimenting her almost transparent night wear. As Rin watched, Waver's wife stretched out without opening her eyes or giving any appearance of having woken up, scattering blonde curls every which way and arching her chest forward in a motion that would give anyone attracted to women an unfortunate erection, even if said person happened to lack the necessary genitalia. Rin quickly brushed away her phantom erection and hesitantly lay down on the other side, facing away from the hateful sex goddess still unconsciously performing positions from the Kama Sutra in her sleep.

The Japanese schoolgirl was left feeling that there was something incredibly dangerous about her situation, but couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. In any case, sleep would be impossible to achieve with such a despicable person behind her, so Rin knew she needed to be vigilant and stay awake, lest she get eaten alive in her sleep by a she-beast more dangerous than a True Ancestor on a 'red moon' day.

Of course, being tired and stressed and still a bit miffed about losing her first boyfriend before they could even go on one date, Rin fell asleep almost immediately, suffering terrible nightmares plagued by idiotic talking redheaded skulls, undead dragons, and an uncomfortable intrusion between her legs that felt suspiciously like Waver's wife's hand's fingers.


	3. Chapter 3

Though many would deny its existence due to shame, and many more because it is part of their job contract to do so, there is an underground market in the Clock Tower for mundane things that have achieved sentience. For whatever reason, people have an unmistakable urge to buy something that should by all rights just sit there and do what it was made for, but instead tends towards waxing poetical about how lonesome its existence is in-between campaigning for greater rights for inanimate objects and spreading filthy rumours about the candlestick in the other room. Talking pencils, squeeze balls that squeeze you back, and body pillows that whisper sweet nothings into your ear are among the most popular products in this free market, though there are always more esoteric, magical items being passed around like money at a strip club.

Waver Annabelle Velvet's housemaid is not one such object. She is proud to have a very impeccable pedigree free of any black marks such as being returned or declared unfit to serve, and if ever asked of her origins, would freely extol the wonderful skills of a certain professor who had created her to be his Mystic Code and then given her away years later to a man he could barely stand. Though she does not show it, as she lacks basic emotional cues and indeed is considered by Waver to be a girl version of the T-1000, Waver Veltet's housemaid is also grateful to her owner for allowing her to roam about, identify as female, wear and subsequently ruin expensive maid uniforms, and generally be as big a drain on Waver's prana as she could possibly be without spending all day in combat-mode. The fact that she is also a large, sentient blob of mercury is something she feels is only a small facet of her otherwise fully fledged character, and she gets very cross when people stereotype her as unthinking and unfeeling because of it.

"Wake up, Mistress," the maid said, shaking Tohsaka Rin's shoulder gently. Rin snored and turned over, flopping onto her stomach with the grace of a killer whale doing ballet. While she was normally an accommodating, if occasionally bullish person while awake, a sleeping Rin more closely resembles a dieting Snorlax than any sort of human being. "Mistress," the maid spoke again with a soft, chiming voice that sounded as if it had been produced by a thousand crystal wine glasses vibrating at different frequencies, "If you don't wake up, I will be forced to probe you vigorously until you do so." The maid's right hand melted and a trio of thin, undulating silvery tentacles appeared in its place. Mercury is by nature poisonous to humans, but sentient mercury merely chooses to be poisonous when it wants to be, which is rarely. After all, no one wants to spread negative stereotypes around. It would be bad for the movement.

Perhaps sensing some danger on the edge of her dulled senses, Rin blinked her eyes open as if they'd been covered in sand and then left to bake in a dry oven. Upon seeing the expectant maid holding aloft something commonly referred to by Japanese female magi as Bad News, she groaned and shut them again. "Not again," Rin moaned. "Wasn't last night enough for you?"

"You must have been dreaming, Mistress. Last night I was attempting to stop Master from writing angry letters and then burning them while laughing maniacally."

Moments passed as Rin's mind booted up with all the celerity of a discount laptop. Eventually she opened her eyes again, took a good look at the monochrome maid standing by her bed, and sighed. "Do I at least get breakfast?"

"It's an hour past noon, Mistress."

"…what!?"

"The bus leaves in a minute. The Mistress wants you to know that she's grateful for your wanton vandalism of her beloved wall."

"But… doesn't she hate it when people punch holes in her things?"

The maid affected a plastic, knowing smile. "She does, but she knows her husband hates it even more."

Waver Velvet's lecture begins at 2:20 PM on Thursdays, and, due to technicalities beyond his control, ends an hour before that. The common sense needed to decipher such deliberately obtuse times is something Tohsaka Rin possesses in abundance, a rare trait in most magi. Then again, most magi would take the times at face value and prepare a familiar to attend the lecture in their place. Many of the less prestigious lectures that occur in secret rooms hidden behind illusionary walls in the middle of the night are attended solely by a collection of rodents and household pests, since no one wishes to admit their interest in the Kama Sutra as a guide to foreign tantric rituals. Waver's lecture wasn't that well hidden. It took place in a small room on the seventeenth floor of the Clock Tower, which, while proving a bitch to get into, was relatively quick and straightforward about approving Rin's request to study there. If only mundane bureaucracies could be that efficient.

Tohsaka Rin barreled through an ancient wooden door, knocked over a vase worth more than the net worth of several millionaires, barely caught and replaced it with the tips of her fingers, and sank into a bench, breathing with some difficulty due to having sprinted most of the way to her destination.

It was 1:19, and Caren Hortensia was in the middle of consummating her marriage behind a podium when a rather out of breath Tohsaka Rin all but collapsed onto one of the chapel pews. Caren Hortensia was married to God, and as she had been taught, she made sure to show her love every single day. Her love was so great that it would absolutely spoil any mortal rotten without fail, so it was fortunate that she reserved it solely for someone who didn't really give a damn, and hadn't given a damn since He damned some poor sod to eternal torment for badmouthing Him. Caren didn't really care about that, though. She knew He was just being shy as usual, and that one day He would descend and ravish her most thoroughly. Until then, she amused herself with various implements.

Most would have been annoyed at their intimacy being interrupted, but the pale haired young nun at the fore of the chapel (or embassy, as many called it) looked up from a book thick enough to cause a concussion, and allowed a predatory smile to flit across her lips. It was luck that Rin couldn't see any of Caren's body below the waist, which had been thankfully hidden by that ever useful podium. "Welcome. If you're here to attend my lecture on 50 Shades of Punishment, you're an hour early. Mister Velvet's lecture is one floor down." There was a pregnant pause. "Would you like to confess your sins? I have leather, and it's very soft today."

Tohsaka Rin barreled through an ancient iron door, tripped over a slightly raised section of floor tile, and fell into a glass cabinet of fine china, shattering enough cups to make the Queen of England weep. A minute later, when the only traces of her accident were the frown on her face and Waver Velvet's unabashed grin, she sank into one of a half dozen chairs that were evenly spaced out in the glorified broom closet she'd found herself in and sneezed away the dust that her motions had stirred up.

"Sorry," Waver said, leaning on a podium with a base that looked to have been chewed on by rats. "The janitor hasn't gotten around to cleaning it yet. I suspect he'll continue to not get around to it for another month at least." The entire room was empty of life, save the unperturbed professor and his new student, who was beginning to think she should've just taken Reinforcement 101 like the rest of the freshmen.

"Are you actually a lecturer," Rin growled, completely fed up with everything. "Or is this going to end with a group of burly men in gimp outfits trying to tie me down?"

"Yes," Waver said. "Turn to page three."

Taken aback, the girl bit back a witty retort. "I don't have the textbook."

"You do in an alternate universe. Turn to page three."

About halfway through the most confusing series of words Rin had ever had the fortune of experiencing (yet somehow understood perfectly), the iron door was pushed ajar a short distance, before closing once more, eliciting a loud yowl from the black cat that had just gotten the tip of its tail squashed. The mangy thing plodded towards Waver with the care one gives an annoying child, and deposited a damp letter on his podium along with a hairball and a few mouse bones, before prancing away and curling up into a ball on the chair next to Rin's.

"Drat," Waver said without a hint of emotion after spending a good five minutes on the paper in his hands. "Gregory's gone."

"Gregory?"

"My last student. Looks like that rat bastard got another one."

"Got?"

"Yes." Waver nodded. "Without any students, I lose my job. This guy's been picking off all of mine one by one. No one's brave enough to sign up for my course anymore."

"Wait!" Rin stood, making sure to slam her fists on the nearest chair, which happened to be the one the mangy cat was resting on. As it hissed its frustration, her own grew. "I never asked for this! Are you saying I'm in danger?"

"Danger is a relative term, Miss Tohsaka," Waver said, doing his best impression of a James Bond villain. He tapped the wet paper on his podium. "You've always been in danger. Now you're just slightly more susceptible to random accidents. Only they aren't random; they're deliberately engineered, and they're not accidents; they're assassinations."

"Metal Gear?"

"No, assassinations."

Despite her best efforts to convince herself to abandon this insane teacher, who was less insane and more completely desensitized to any sort of threat to his life thanks to years of having to put up with a rat bastard at work (who kept trying to make him miserable) and a righteous cunt at home (who kept trying to have sex with him), Rin sat through the rest of the lecture. He may have been completely insane, but Velvet was the closest thing to an ally she had in the world she'd willingly immersed herself into just to get away from her demonic sister.

Taking a page from said sister's book, Rin made sure by the end of the lecture that Waver had promised her a room in the most expensive dorm, all fees waived, and the highest possible passing mark. While she mentally patted herself on the back for such an accomplishment, Waver mentally patted himself on the back for managing to trick his student into getting even less than the minimum most others demanded as blackmail. She hadn't even asked for dental!

Afterwards, despite herself, Rin spent yet another strange hour upstairs in the chapel, watching with barely restrained fascination as Caren Hortensia demonstrated exactly how one extracts information from a prisoner using only a potato, a straw, and two barrels of Assyrian Ale.

And leather. Lots and lots of leather.


	4. Chapter 4

There is something that should be clarified before proceeding further into this affair. The Clock Tower, despite its myriad of secrets and sordid affairs, is in the end, a University. It prides itself on being the primary center for aspiring intellectuals to advance their arts, a position it attained through years of ruthlessly eliminating competitors, establishing a monopoly on mystic codes and historical records, and supplying prospective members with an endless supply of eager, willing students to serve as fodder for experiments, private armies, and coffee runs, requiring only a handful of lectures in return from people who would love nothing more than to brag to their lessers about how amazing they are. The system has worked beautifully for thousands of years, producing excellent magi at an astounding rate with only a few bad apples like Waver Velvet managing to get through and spoil everyone's day.

Tohsaka Rin, despite her foreign ways and inability to properly rebuff _anyone's_ advances even after years of practice, knows these facts well. She can vividly recall her father speaking of how absolutely marvellous the Clock Tower is, between his angry rants about why Matou Zouken is a senile old coot, and extensive tales of Justabchiet von Einzbern's embarrassing fetish for building and subsequently fawning over white haired, red eyed homunculus maids. Even now she gets a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach when recalling her father's stories of that magical place. It could be said that studying in the Clock Tower has been one of her dreams ever since she was a little girl just learning the wonders of making things explode with Reinforcement.

Tohsaka Rin, despite her kind-hearted nature and general lack of a magus' ruthlessness, also knows that fantasy never lives up to reality, except when it actually does.

"…and so you must always remember to keep at least a quart of apple cider on hand at all times when venturing below the ground level," Caren finished up her explanation. "Old Gazamy isn't necessarily malicious, but he gives you magi enough trouble that it was decided a few decades ago (by unanimous vote of all the Clan Heads and several incensed juniors) that he should be locked up in the deepest dungeons of the Tower's dankest basements for a good century or so, or at least until all the stains come out. No one's heard from him for a while so you should be fine, but it's better to err on the side of caution, especially if you're planning on multiple trips."

"Apple cider?"

"Preferably aged; he likes it when it's all dusty. Oh, and if you don't want to end up at his mercy, just do the opposite of everything I told you."

Rin furiously scribbled over a portion of her notes and wrote a correction in the nearby margin, feeling rather cheated about the whole thing. Despite her annoyance she couldn't help but feel satisfied at finding something even tangentially resembling a kindred spirit in the Clock Tower, even if that person's lessons were the most disturbing things she'd ever seen.

"Who else do you have?" Caren asked, peering over the edge of the bench she was perched on and getting a good view of her only student's notes, as well as her assets. "Actually, just let me see your schedule."

After taking a look at the almost incomprehensible page of tables and figures, and a longer one at her student's body, the woman grinned, laughing at a joke only she could understand. "Archibald, Barthomeloi, Aozaki… this is quite good. Your family must be quite powerful to get you such advanced classes in your first year. You only need a one-on-one with Zelretch to round it all off, and half the faculty will be after your head."

"Next semester," Rin said, snapping up the schedule and stuffing it in her bag while mentally thanking her father for bothering to leave a letter of recommendation before consigning himself to another existence. "Where's Auditorium C?"

There are certain prerequisites one needs to fulfill in order to say that they are successful magi. In the first place, success implies life, so one cannot be dead, though vampires are given a free pass. One must also be respected, intelligent, accomplished, esteemed, and a bit of a dick. Lord Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi is all of those things and more, so it's no surprise to anyone that he is one of the most successful Lords in the modern Clock Tower environment. His mother was quoted as saying "I knew he'd go far" after seeing a five year old Kayneth carefully arrange for his playmate to fall into a pit of acidic ooze, only releasing the boy after a he had signed a contract of eternal servitude to the Archibald family. Additionally, Kayneth's father was quoted on Kayneth's fifteenth birthday as saying "That boy needs to get laid, pronto".

Yes, Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi is many things. He is a successful magus. He is an esteemed lecturer of the Clock Tower. He is, according a certain resentful lecturer, a rat bastard. Kayneth is well groomed, well respected, and couldn't possibly be having less sex if his life depended on it.

Yes, if there is a single downside to being Kayneth (and there always is), it's that his wife absolutely hates his guts and can't stand the sight of him, something that for many would be a plus, but is in this case not desirable in the least. She is, according to Kayneth, a frigid bitch who wouldn't know a man if he blackmailed her parents into making her marry him. He is, according to her, a desperate whiner that can't go five minutes without complaining about anything and everything, and wouldn't know atmosphere if it brutally assaulted him in an alley one morning, only to be stuck in a line-up for him to pick out days later. Kayneth's wife spends most of her day wandering around London, visiting friends, and bragging about how her husband has never once seen her naked. Kayneth spends most of his days plotting various kinds of petty revenge against her and his significantly more successful student, who, while also hating his wife, is known to get daily offers from his nubile and ambitious young students and thus has no reason to be constantly seething with barely repressed anger and lust.

The morning of Tohsaka Rin's first day in class, she arrived in Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi's lecture hall a single minute late, and immediately saw that her teacher, who had been in the middle of explaining a critical piece of information to the class when she slammed open the door with all the force of a clueless idiot, was absolutely seething with barely repressed anger and lust.

"I-"

"Sit down," Kayneth growled, his beard bristling. "And shut up. Also, see me after class."

Ignoring the tittering of the hundred or so students in the lecture hall, Rin took a seat right at the back of the class, put on her ugliest pair of glasses, and started taking notes.

An hour later, after one student had been explosively ejected from the hall and several others had beat hasty retreats, Kayneth finally finished his lecture. He was still angry and seething, but the exercise had calmed him down significantly enough for the braver students to ask a few questions.

"Professor, what exactly is the relationship between the phantom mass of the intermediary Projection and the final magnitude of its composite quasi-product?" A transfer student from Atlas, only a few years older than Rin, voiced her query. "Professor Edelfelt was suggesting that it is inversely proportional, and you didn't mention it, but I did an experiment earlier and I believe the difference stabilizes as a factor of about 358…"

"Shut up. You're staying after class too, Eltnam, for being an insufferable smart-ass. Everyone else, _get out_." Kayneth slammed his fist on the podium hard enough to fracture it, and there was a mad rush as students raced each other to the door. Half of them wouldn't return the next day. "They get stupider every year," the professor growled, sinking to his seat and running a hand through his pale blond hair, which had been dislodged from its elegant perm by his passionate speech.

After spending a minute sighing into his mostly empty cup of coffee, the lecturer summoned his two detainees up to the front of the class. Rin tried to keep from shuffling or looking nervous, but her poker face wasn't nearly as good as the other girl's. "Professor Archibald," she began. "I would like you to know that I-"

"You're not going to offer yourself to me, are you?" the professor asked.

"I- what?"

Kayneth made a few wiggly waggly motions in the air with a finger. "You know," he said. "Sexual favours. That low class idiot keeps going on about how Asians are always 'DTF' or whatever that means. You wouldn't be the first, you know. I'm a very popular man, so you must understand that I'm quite tired of all these vulgar requests. I'll ask you to refrain from them while in my presence."

"Of course," Rin said pleasantly, while her back teeth were busy trying to grind themselves down to gums. "You can be sure that I'm most assuredly _not_ going to proposition you, sir. I'd rather die than even consider such a thing."

"Good. You're free to go. Don't be late again." Kayneth nodded, and then glanced at the other girl, very obviously eying her up. "Eltnam, see me in my office later so we can discuss your ideas. I think with the right _leverage_, I could get you published, depending on how flexible you are."

"I am extremely flexible, Professor Archibald," the transfer student said, her poker face unmoved while Rin looked like she was having a mini seizure. "But I just remembered that I made plans with a friend of mine today, and if I renege on them my circuits will try to eat me alive."

"Right, right." Kayneth, looking a bit disappointed by today's catch, let off both of the girls, who immediately left the room as fast as was possible while looking like they weren't trying to leave the room as fast as possible. Once the doors slammed shut, Rin let out the breath she'd been holding, and started looking around for a wall to punch.

Instead, she came face to face with the transfer student, now sporting a mischievous smile. "Greetings," the girl said. "We should be friends."


End file.
